Shortly after birth, the newborn displays early signs of both aggressive and socially constructive, or prosocial behavior. The first signs of aggression are evident in the angry responses of newborns whose rhythmic sucking has been interrupted. Signs of socially constructive behavior are manifested just as early when newborns cry in reaction to the cries of other infants. This contagious crying...

In the recent literature, several hypotheses have been offered to explain patterns of human behavior in social environments. In particular, these patterns include 'prosocial' ones, such as fairness, cooperation, and collective good provision. Psychologists suggest that these prosocial behaviors are driven not by miscalculations, but by salience of social identity, in-group favoritism, emotion, ...

Although peers are a major influence during adolescence, the relative importance of specific mechanisms of peer influence on the development of problem behavior is not well understood. This study investigated five domains of peer influence and their relationships to adolescents' problem and prosocial behaviors. Self-report and teacher ratings were obtained for 1787 (53 % female) urban middle sc...

People's voting behavior has a great impact on the political road that is taken in our countries. The current research shows that mimicry, the imitation of nonverbal behavior, unconsciously affects our political voting behavior. Earlier research has shown that mimicry enhances prosocial thoughts and behaviors. As prosocial people are expected to be more attracted to left-wing parties, it was pr...

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the relationships between contextual factors (i.e., autonomy-supportive vs. controlling coaching style) and person factors (i.e., autonomous vs. controlled motivation) outlined in self-determination theory (SDT) were related to prosocial and antisocial behaviors in sport. We also investigated moral disengagement as a mediator of these relationshi...

EFFECTS OF A POSITIVE PEER REPORTING INTERVENTION ON PROSOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN A GENERAL EDUCATION CLASSROOM by Camela Y. Johnson Methods for promoting prosocial behavior in educational settings are many and varied. This literature review presents a context for defining and understanding prosocial behavior, including comparisons and contrasts with other behavioral concepts and terms. Understand...

An unresolved controversy regarding social behaviors is exemplified when natural selection might lead to behaviors that maximize fitness at the social-group level but are costly at the individual level. Except for the special case of groups of clones, we do not have a general understanding of how and when group-optimal behaviors evolve, especially when the behaviors in question are flexible. To...

We investigated the dynamics of identity fusion and prosocial behavior within political groups in the four weeks preceding and following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The primary questions were whether a negative event (losing) would lead to a more pronounced increase in identity fusion, and whether identity fusion would predict prosocial giving. We found that while fusion gradually incr...